Iran’s Destructive Environmental Record Wreaks Havoc Across Middle East

(New York, N.Y.) — Today, the international community celebrates World Water Day to encourage awareness and advocacy for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. 

UANI’s resource, Iran’s War On The Environment And Environmentalists, highlights the Iranian regime’s dangerous disregard for the environment and harassment of environmentalists. One of the most ruinous facets of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s destructive legacy is the government’s war on the country’s own environment. Without drastic environmental and water management policy changes, over half of Iran’s population is at risk of being displaced over the next 25 years.

The Iranian regime has prioritized its short-term survival and profits in pursuing ruinous agricultural policies and reckless overconstruction of dams, leaving the nation to face a water insecure future. Instead of making necessary changes, however, Iran’s regime has responded to the impending environmental crisis by harassing, arresting, and even killing the experts seeking to provide sound policy advice. The government has similarly responded with heavy-handed tactics to quell the protests from citizens facing hardships, including drinking water shortages and the loss of cultivable farmland, due to the regime’s environmental mismanagement.

The Iranian regime’s disregard for the environment has negatively impacted neighboring countries, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather than distributing shared water sources with Iraq equitably, Iran has dammed and diverted the tributaries originating in its territory feeding into the Tigris River for its own purposes, significantly curtailing water flows to the vital Iraqi lifeline. The government’s actions upstream have led to shortages of drinking water and electricity, destruction of wetlands, and farmland loss downstream in Iraq. At the same time, Iran has gone as far as training and arming the Taliban to sabotage Afghan dam construction upstream to prevent any disruption of water flows to its own territory.  Iran’s environmental meddling has weakened the Iraqi and Afghan central governments, and Iran has exploited the instability to project power and influence in these countries.

To read UANI’s Iran’s War On The Environment And Environmentalists resource, please click here.

###